Sports Archive

SPORTS ARCHIVE

Hockey splits on the Road

02/25/2013 -
1:00 AM

On Friday night after Colorado College defeated the Huskies 4-3, and the Gophers defeated Minnesota-Duluth 5-3, SCSU’s lead in the WCHA dropped to one point. And for a short time Saturday evening, the Huskies and Gophers were tied at the top after Minnesota tied UMD. Fortunately, Joey Benik was able to find the net late in the third to put the dagger in the Saturday night game, and the Huskies found themselves back in a two-point advantage in the standings with four games to play.

But the Tigers would battle back, scoring four unanswered goals from Jeff Collett, Rylan Schwartz, and two from Charlie Taft, with the score being 4-2 with 5:52 left to play in the third. Jonny Brodzinski would score his second goal of the game with an extra attacker with 1:11 left in the game, but the Huskies could not find the equalizer.

On Saturday night, It was the Tigers who got on the board first with a goal from Rylan Schwartz just 3:48 into the game for his 13th goal of the season. But this time it was the Huskies who took the game away. SCSU scored four unanswered goals for themselves this time with goals from Brodzinski (17), Kalle Kossila (13), Cory Thorson (9), and Ben Hanowski (13), making it 4-1. Schwartz netted another goal at 4:12 of the third to make it a two-goal game, before Joey Benik scored his second goal of the season to make it 5-2.

With the win, the Huskies improved their record to 16-7-1 in the WCHA and 33 points. The win, plus the tie for the Gophers lowered SCSU’s magic number to 7, which represents the amount of points either gained by the Huskies or lost by the second place team in order for SCSU to clinch the MacNaughton Cup. A 3-0-1 finish for SCSU will outright bring a WCHA title to the Granite City. The Huskies remain in top spot in the conference and the 7th place ranking in this week’s USCHO poll. SCSU is ranked in the number 10 spot in the PairWise.

This weekend, the Michigan Tech Huskies will visit the National Hockey and Event Center for the final regular season series between the two teams in the WCHA. It will also be the final regular season series at home for SCSU, as they are on the road at Wisconsin for the final weekend of the season. Listen to the final two weekends of action on 88.1 FM and follow us on Twitter for the most up-to-the minutes news.